


Wilt

by fatiguedfern



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Flower Crowns, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, this isnt happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 12:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12012708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatiguedfern/pseuds/fatiguedfern
Summary: As a flower's petals fall, Saihara drifts through and into fields wider than his horizons.





	Wilt

Vines twine around his wrists, slipping beneath pallid coatings of flesh and bleeding lethargy into his veins. 

Saihara drifts through white noise. Tensed hands press his shuddering torso to the padded cot. His vision swims through a ruptured kaleidoscope lense before dimming into static. 

He wakes choking on stems and brightly pigmented tissue. Gold dust clings to his exposed skin and the cloth of a uniform long since buried. 

The breeze hums in greeting. Waves of petals flutter with the whistling rhythm. He clambers to his feet; his movements graceless and unrefined. 

Waist-deep in wildflower seas, Saihara’s pollen-tipped fingers skim across the blooming flora, searching for a perch to grip onto amidst flimsy stalks. His hand passes through tangled roots; paper leaves left shrivelled in its swerving wake. He goes unsupported and continues to wade against gentle tides. 

He staggers and flounders his way through trailing brambles of ash until he sputters out onto the turfed strand. 

Hooked fingers claw into the soil layered under the grass bank, patches of barren loam and balding green paving his ascent. Saihara crawls over the ridge, collapsing onto the shaded sod. 

He reclines across the turf; grass soft against his spread palms for a moment before the blades curl in on themselves and turn a putrid ashen. Saihara leans back further - careful not to shift his palms from the decay they’d formed - and using his blazer as a headrest, lets his head fall against the trunk of the tree curtaining the earth in shadow. Saihara resigns himself to the rot his corrosive touch had wrought and likely still would and casts knotted-fishline scrutiny into the meadow sloping below. 

The sun bathes the field in a light that neither scorches puckered skin, nor leaves brittle bones chilled. The untarnished flowers flourish in the warmth, delicate faces tilting upwards towards the mellow glow. Every silhouette and contour thrums with life that could be snuffed by the brush of a finger. 

The wind blows. A rasped howl rather than a welcoming croon. Sprouting leaflets rustle; a single leaf breaks from its roughly patterned beginnings and spirals in a lazy twirl of lime-green onto the back of his hand. And as sure as the sun’s dulcet floodlight, the leaf peels away.

He cups a tentative palm over the tree’s bark, yearning to reach out to something - anything. Five fingers of blight print themselves into the wood and the webbed lifelines threaded beneath him creak in protest. Saihara jolts away, clutching at his face. Stretched thin and pale, his skin remains. Achingly alive. Painfully breakable.

A voice clucks, condescending. “It isn’t like you to destroy things so carelessly. I expected better of you.” Branches crack above and a monochrome blur falls. The boy lands with a resounding thud that leaves Saihara concerned that the impact had snapped his frail legs. 

Ouma bows. His arm folds over his chest and his fluttering cloak hangs from the other. He tilts his head to peer down at Saihara. The brim of Ouma’s cap cuts Ouma’s wide doll eyes into semi-crescents. There’s something unsettling about only seeing half of Ouma’s stare, almost as if the split gaze reflects just how little he’d seen of Ouma.

Saihara gapes up at him for far longer than what might be considered polite. Though, Ouma was never one to shy away from observation, instead blooming under Saihara’s attentive eye.

“Eh, why so serious, Saihara-chan?” 

Ouma slips down next to him, feet sprawling close enough to his for his stomach to twist and for him to jerk back. Ouma giggles at that, but Saihara can’t help but think that, if he could see Ouma’s eyes uncovered, he might see a muted pain swirl through them. 

Hesitantly, he reaches out. Ouma shifts slightly to accommodate the soft prodding at his back. The cape ripples under Saihara’s fingers. Material unfolds in cosmoses of unlit matter and Saihara tries his best to trace lopsided starbursts across the surprisingly warm cloth.

“It’s… nice to see you again, Ouma-kun.”

Ouma smiles and, for once, it doesn’t appear entirely strained. Saihara smiles back. Oddly, that doesn’t feel strained either. 

Ouma bumps into his shoulder; then jumps to his feet with a vigour too gleeful for someone who’d been insistent on carrying the world on his shoulders under the guise of destroying it when in life. 

Tugged upwards and forwards by his shirtsleeve, Saihara isn’t entirely prepared to plunge over the brink and back into the lapping petals. But, in the end, Saihara can’t remember any leap he’d taken without his hand being forced. 

All the same, he rolls down the hill after a cackling Ouma. They land at the mouth of the sea and for a second time Saihara finds himself dotted with yellow freckles. 

Ouma laughs as Saihara shakes his head like a dog dripping with water to rid himself of the now-infertile pollen. Carefree enough for Saihara not to stumble over, Ouma’s laughter is almost sufficient in freeing him from the memory of the spoil outlining his descent. 

The stalks nearly entirely drown Ouma as he toes the coast and pushes into the reeds. 

Returning with handfuls of blossoms and vines clumped in his arms, Ouma settles in front of Saihara. 

In need of affirmation rather than out of curiosity, Saihara asks, “What do you plan on doing with all of this?”

“You’ll see.”

Ouma deftly weaves buds through vines in an unending loop. Once done, he holds a circlet woven from forget-me-nots and morning glories.

“Behold~” Ouma hovers over Saihara, crown in hand. “For you.”

“Oh, uh, thank you.” Saihara’s outstretched hand crumples just before taking the crown. “But I’m afraid I can’t take it. Everything I touch seems to turn to ash. Not that that’s anything new, really.” Saihara tries for a laugh, only for the sound to come out hoarse and hollow.

Ouma raises an eyebrow. “‘Turns to ash’? Who knew you were so melodramatic, Saihara-chan.” Ouma scoops off his cap and plops it onto Saihara’s head, then balances the circlet atop. “There!”

Saihara’s grateful for the hat, for in that moment the sun suddenly feels too bright.

Ouma falls back onto the grass. “Don’t go thinking that I’ll go unpaid. I expect my own special crown!”

Saihara glances at the finger pointed at the leftovers from Ouma’s attempt. “What? I can’t-”

His voice is drowned out by Ouma sticking his fingers in his ears and droning. Saihara sighs.

The vines crack and splinter, and by the time he’d managed to force them into a shape akin to that of a circle, the sun had bled halfway across the sky.

He presents the misshapen circlet through stutters and places the crown as cautiously as possible on top of Ouma’s hair.

“Y’know,” Ouma muses some time later with his back pressed against printed wood, “out of all the crowns I’ve ever worn, I think this is my favourite.”

“I’m glad.”

The sun’s nearly painted the entire sky russet.

“It was nice seeing you again, Saihara-chan.”

Ouma slips his hand into Saihara’s. His fingers twine around venomous ones.

Saihara’s left with a handful of ash.

.

The monitor plugged into his arm metallically hums in greeting.

Sat in a corner, Yumeno and Harukawa whisper behind fans of cards. 

There’s a vase next to his bed. The flower’s shine with a gloss that could only mean that they were as false as the smile of the nurse who’d settled them there.

At the very least he couldn’t wilt plastic blooms.

**Author's Note:**

> it's the start of spring where i'm from, so to celebrate i wrote some oumasai feat. as many descriptions of flowers i could think of. i guess this also counts as Saihara's birthday fic since i probably won't finish what i was planning in time


End file.
